


Salt the Roads

by swampgallows



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: F/M, Gen, Gender Ambiguous, M/M, Other, POV Alternating, POV Second Person, POV Third Person, Wrath of the Lich King
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2018-09-22 10:20:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9603722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swampgallows/pseuds/swampgallows
Summary: An Alliance envoy airship crashes in the Geyser Fields of Borean Tundra. In your critical condition, you seek the help of the Warsong Offensive to deliver you to Valiance Keep.Content advisory: physical illness, mental illness, bodily injury/mutilation, self-harm, abuse/trauma, medical abuse, vehicle accident, death, mortality, emetophobia, sexual content.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have a lot of feelings about Garrosh and none of them are good.

"Fel is that sound?"  
  
"Look, sir, out toward the horizon!"  
  
"It's... an airship! Not one of ours, is it?"  
  
"It's taking a nosedive. It's— it's going to crash!"  
  
"But it's not ours, is it?" Varok Saurfang grumbled.  
  
"No, High Overlord, those are Alliance colors."  
  
"So quit gawking and get back to work!"

"SAURFANG!"  
Garrosh Hellscream, overlord of the Warsong Offensive, appeared on the balcony and approached the group. "This is my keep, these are MY soldiers, and I will order them as I see fit!"  
  
The elder orc tightened his scowl. "I am the chief advisor to Thrall, and here I was sent to be the same for you. It is not a position I earned by accident, nor did I fight to wrest it from his hands like a greedy child." A low blow.  
  
Garrosh clenched his fists. "You may be Thrall's right hand, but he is not here, is he? Here, I am in charge."  
  
"Show, don't tell." Varok glared at Garrosh with a sour smirk.  
  
Preceded by an indignant snort, Hellscream bellowed, "Scout the crash! With any luck we'll find out what the Alliance are up to."

  
\--

  
AGONY AGONY AGONY AGONY  
MUST SCREAM CANNOT SCREAM  
HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME

Shaking, you're holding your jaw in place. Shaking, holding your neck in place. Shaking, shaking, shaking, trembling, all of you, shaking.

Hurts, hurts, by the light, hurts, holy light, holy light, it hurts, it hurts.  
Everything is dark, everything is smoke, fire, everything is cold, everything hurts, everything hurts.

Wolves howling in the distance. Take me now, for I cannot bear this. Take me now, tear me apart; I cannot bear this pain.

Orcs, you hear them. Orcs, stampeding toward you, the monsters, galloping along on their heavy, loud, merciful wolves. Spare me this pain. Let me die, let me die, kill me now, it hurts, it hurts. There are sounds coming from you, too, but you aren't sure how you're making them or from where inside you they come. The sounds you make are all around you, never stopping, piercing, all-encompassing.

"Krag"s and "mok"s and "osh"s resounded in the distance, all of the hard words hitting like splintered glass, growing closer, surrounding you. It is growing dark. The sun endures the blanket of blight across the tundra and dares to shine, even still, but you cannot see it now. It grows dark, perhaps just for you.

"Lok'tar!"

What a dreadful sound.

  
\--

  
You are awake. Your fingers are tightly woven in the fur of a panting wolf. It is not yours. It is alive. It is Orcish.  
It is all Orcish.  
Orcish and pain. It is all pain, it is all Orcish.

The room about you swirls, head dizzy and swimming with pain. It cannot be real, you assure yourself, as you were sure the plane was going down. You had accepted death and you are positive it had come for you. There was no way it hadn't. It claimed everyone else on board. Tailspin's bright cheeks and wide smile shimmer in your mind. He is so brilliant. You know he did everything he could. But you had accepted death and had the thought, "Here it comes," seeing its dark hands reach for you amidst the smoke and fire and all of the noise of the aircraft scraping across the sky.

You wonder what curious sort of afterlife awaited you that would place you within the iron walls of a Horde fortress. This certainly wasn't real, after all. As you stir, so too does the massive wolf, rearing its head back and snorting. Though happening right in front of you, the conversation between the orcs sounds terribly far away. Orc words are tools, you think. They sound like axes and hammers, taking everyone else's words and chopping them into little bits.

Things are starting to settle, now. Your eyes have finally stopped rolling enough to focus on your surroundings.

Iron stretches all the way to the ceilings, flanked by dark wood and hundreds of cold connector rivets. Scattered fire pits serve as warmth and light, of which there is very little. Various races of the Horde mill about—a tauren and elf you recognize immediately—but in your current presence are a handful of orcs fanned out in a semicircle around you. Men, women, young, old. Some familiar, all various shades of green. Except one.

The brown one stares you down. Lips tightly curled around his tusks. He leers. He does not stop. He looks you over, all over, boring his daggers into you, unyielding. You can feel his hatred.

  
\--

  
He hated you. He hated looking at you. He hated your shrunken face; how worm-like humans looked, their features always narrow and sunken in like their souls were a collapsing mine shaft, like their faces got beaten in at birth while their skulls were still soft. He ought to beat your face in. Spirits, he hated you. He'll crack that leper eggshell of yours if he has no need for your mushy brain and slack mouth. Hate you.  
  
Hate you. Look at you: bloated, swollen, diseased. That his scouts would contaminate his hold with your presence disgusted and bewildered him. The pus and blood seeping from your legs agitated the wolves and roused them to hunger for your gore, the skittering droves of undead that encircled the blasted continent besides. You fetid flypaper of a human; your sweet copper blood stinking and staining his Warsong steel. Hate you.  
  
Hate you.  
  
You dare. Hate you. Hate you. You cannot fight, you cannot run, you yet cannot even speak. Useless. Useless. Hate you.

"Words will not come until shock subsides," a healer tells him.  
  
"Do what you will. Just get this thing out of my sight," he spits.

  
\--

  
Stings.  
  
It stings.  
  
Wet.  
  
Dead...? No. It stings.  
  
You see your feet in the water. You see your legs in the water. You are in the water.  
  
The water is very hot.  
  
You feel your face. It is wet.  
  
You are sitting in the very hot water.  
  
Hard to breathe. Very hot.  
  
Close your eyes...

Close your eyes...

Loud.  
  
You look. Can't see.  
  
Close your eyes.

  
You hear something. It barges into the basement of the stronghold to survey the small array of wash basins, as if searching for the one that is occupied. Its harried rummaging tempers as it sees the steam rising from a corner. It approaches steadily, belying a sense of urgency. As it pulls away the banner-turned-curtain, the especially cool gust of outside air revives a sliver of your consciousness. You can feel moisture forming and dripping down your face. Your window was short; an orc's massive frame fills the space and blocks the breeze. It is the brown orc.

He sees you slumped against the side of the basin, non-responsive. Drool pools on your chest, still attached to your mouth in a thick string. Your skin beneath the water is an entirely separate color from that of your face.

He mutters in Orcish. You do not understand, but you can tell he is upset. He has not stopped being upset. He shouts toward a doorway from which he came; perhaps an order, perhaps a curse. Perhaps both. Nothing happens. You hear him shout again, but listening is hard. Eyes closed. Very hot. Sleep.

Hot under skin. Where do you end? Where do you begin? Water in your ears. Blood?

He looks at you, then to the door, then ducks beneath the curtain and departs. Quiet returns. You're alone again. All hot again. Hot. Hot.

  
Hot.

  
Too hot...

  
  
An arm hooks around you and reels in from the bath, a brick wall of cold air slamming into you. You are lifted. Put up somewhere. On your belly. Water sounds. Eyes flutter open, and below you see a pail of readily melting snow being scooped into the bath. An orc's thick brown arm serves as a stirrer, air sucked through the teeth and hand flinching as it first hits the water. More snow in the bath. Stirring, stirring. You exhale and feel yourself slipping from where you are perched, wherever that is. On the orc? A jerk, then you are hoisted back up.

Are you naked? You aren't sure. You feel as if you're wearing a suit of steel wool.

Feeling dizzy. Hot, hot, then cold, cold. Skin might come apart, might slough off. You feel yourself slipping again, but with guidance. Warmth surrounds you. Water again this time. Hot, cold, warm. Your gut twists and shoots up your throat, thrusting your head over the side of the basin and splattering the ground with runny vomit. Again. Then again.

The orc is still there, the stirrer. He grunts, unfazed. Same one. Must be. Your chin rests on the edge of the basin and you wearily roll your head toward him.

  
Yes, it's the same orc from before. He's the only brown orc in the place, you suspect. Is he not a member of high command? His armor suggests so. To what end is he serving as your caretaker? He crosses his arms, one much more flushed than the other. He speaks to you in Orcish, which you never learned a lick of. He realizes this.

"You. Say Common?" He stumbles over the words but maintains an authoritative tone. You nod. Slowly.  
  
"Garrosh Hellscream." He proudly beats his chest with a fist. It's your turn.  
  
Your name is—  
  
He doesn't give you chance to answer. "You in orc place. My place. You go from my place. Go or die."  
  
You were going to die anyhow, but the orc scouts brought you here. It is difficult to relay this concept to Hellscream due in part to both the language barrier and your floundering physical condition.  
  
"Will I die?" is all you can muster.  
  
Garrosh frowns, a mix of pity and irritation. "No need you here. You go die." From behind him the curtain parts, revealing a very cross elder Saurfang. He looks at you, then chastises Garrosh from the sound of things. The younger orc turns to leave, shooting you a glance over his shoulder before disappearing behind the curtain.

  
Did he say Hellscream?

  
  
"So, you survived the crash. Right before the airstrip too, wasn't it?"  
  
You nod. Varok is familiar with Common.  
  
"How are you feeling?"  
  
"Hurts."  
  
"Good. And who are you working for? The Alliance?"  
  
"Me. Just... me."  
  
"It's pretty cold tonight. You got more information for me than that, or would you like to join the nerubians in the quarry?"  
  
"Really... really mean it. Just... trapper. Hunter. Heard about animals," you manage. It's the most you've said in what feels like days.  
  
"Both Horde and Alliance have barely gained a foothold in the tundra and you expect me to believe precious resources are being frittered away on tradesmen? Hobbyists at best?"  
  
"Fizzcrank." It's a miracle you remembered the name. "Gnome... needed builders."  
  
"Builders, not trappers. And how could a human's hands be of any use to a gnome?"  
  
"Builders need food. Engineers aren't trappers. Had to find new food... Food that isn't rations. To be here a long time."  
  
"Feh," Saurfang spat. "That your Alliance are so unequipped with basic skill sets for survival is always astounding to me. Bringing extra mouths to feed you instead of figuring how to feed your own. The Horde has no such luxury."  
  
"I'm... All of the gnomes died. Tailspin... might have lived. We were both injured."  
  
"Well then. Lucky you, trapper." Varok chuckled. "But your luck has run out. I don't like to be the one to put down the dog, but—"  
  
"Wait— I," you stammer, "I can give you the location of the airstrip. The gnomes, they found something there."  
  
"Ha! You think something like that will spare your pitiful little life? Besides, you're just a civilian, not remembered and no use to anyone. What's left of you to salvage after nearly being boiled to death?"

  
You scramble for a reason to spare your life.

  
"You've proven to be of no use. A trapper knows nothing that we don't. All you've taught us is that the geysers—" Saurfang leaned in for emphasis, "Which we can see from our own _base_ — are deadly."  
  
"Then... you'll let me go?"  
  
"Go? Go where?" The old orc laughed. "This land is overrun with Scourge and you're looking halfway there. You are too crippled to fight. Valiance Keep will not take you even if we deliver you. You want to wander these wastes as an exile forever?"

  
You don't want to die. It is the only thought you can articulate. As the bath cools you become acutely aware of the searing pain coursing throughout your body. Your veins are molten, your skin beyond raw. You were thoroughly cooked by the geyser and battered in the crash. Your gaze then floats down to your legs, which are nearly unrecognizable. You most likely are not capable of wandering anywhere, regardless of affiliation.

  
"Please... please don't kill me."  
  
"Then you remain our prisoner. Whether you've information or not."  
  
"But—please—you could take me to the Alliance. How do you know they won't—"  
  
"You aren't worth the trip. We get the lowest grunts to exchange Alliance deserters at the gate only because they are soldiers. If dishonorable ones," Saurfang grumbles. "But you? Not even a peon would deliver you."  
  
"So why keep me here?"  
  
Saurfang leans back and folds his hands behind him. His red eyes close as he relishes a brief moment of candor out of the earshot and language of his Advised. "To protect the frail and ignorant ego of a frail and ignorant boy." He chuckles to himself.  
  
"Hell...scream?" He... seems strong, you want to say, recalling the sheer size of him, the fire coiled in his ruthless glare, but you dare not argue. Was he really just a "boy"?  
  
" _Son_ of Hellscream, rather. He sends scouts to the site, he'll take what they fetch. The fruits of his impulse," he muses. "Ah, but he has the weight of the Horde upon his shoulders now. He must keep his spirits above that mantle."

  
Another lump of vomit lingers in your throat but you suppress it. The bath has run almost cold, rekindling the heat of your wounds. You need medical attention. You are no soldier but no mere civilian, not like they say. After all, you were in Northrend, weren't you?

  
...Weren't you?

  
  
"Am I stuck here to wait and die? For no reason—" Feeling lightheaded, you sway and then clutch the side of the bath.  
  
The orc watches you and smiles to himself, pleased with your suffering. "Go there yourself, then. You will get sick and die in a week if the burns do not kill you first."  
  
"Saurfang," an orc shaman addresses the High Overlord from outside the curtain. He grunts, eyes flitting and sizing up your frail self. His demeanor shifts, posture tense.  
  
"This is your last chance, human. I offer to spare you a lingering death."  
  
You gather your bearings the best you can, fever rising and head clouded with pain. "I survived the crash. I will survive this too."  
  
The orc shakes his head. "Doubt it. One week at best. If you aren't foolish or well enough to leave by then, you're spider bait. Understand?"  
  
  
You cannot meet his eyes. He moves closer to you, curling some fingers around the edge of the bath, and his voice drops low.  
  
"Listen, human. I am old. I am experienced. I have much wisdom from both sides of conflict. You will go softly, as in a sleep, and not have your body break down around you. Otherwise, the last of your days will be here, in this place, cold and alone and subject to Garrosh's whims like the rest of them."  
  
  
You feel that he is being sincere, but you say nothing.  
  
  
"You are young. If your time has come, then you should greet it. Do not let yourself waste away like this."  
  
  
It... can't be that bad. You only think it, but the old one sees it spoken on your face and leans closer, his raspy voice its closest ability to sounding tender.  
  
  
"I am a father, you know. Yet if my pup were in your position, I would put him down myself. You will not recover from this."  
  
"I... I will."  
  
"Saurfang," the shaman calls again.  
  
"Very well." He turns from you. "Remember: I granted you the mercy of a swift end, yet you rejected. You only delay the inevitable."  
  
  
Saurfang leaves, the healer readily replacing him. She dips a towel in your bathwater then uses it to clean the side of the basin where you vomited. She hands you a clean towel, then nods at you.

  
  
You are naked.

  
==

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic has over 15k words so far but because I don't write in a linear fashion I may not be able to upload the rest for a while. never written a fic before so i figured i'd post a semblance of a first "chapter" to see if anyone was interested in readin this cathartic garbage (catharbage).


	2. Chapter 2

He was sure you would be a gnome. Something easy. Something fragile. Some frightened little gnome girl with pink pigtails, shaking in her boots and spilling pleas and secrets in a waterfall. "Don't kill me, Overlord Hellscream! Please don't kill me! I'll tell you everything, everything!" She would have squealed with shrill terror at the orc's feet.

Instead, you were this. Some husk of a human—human, of all things—with dead eyes and a dead heart. You were praying to die. Human, of all things, on a gnomish aircraft, built by gnomes, for gnomes, piloted by gnomes, but their meal ticket—a human—survived.

Unbelievable. Such was the rotten luck. But Garrosh supposed he would have to get used to rotten things if the Horde was to prevail against the Lich King.

At Saurfang's discretion ("You sound like a peon, Hellscream.") he stormed up the staircase to the ground level of the Hold, fists tight. Made of several stitched animal hides, the map of the Borean tundra lay in the center of the room adorned with Alliance, Horde, and Scourge markers. There was a wisp of stratagem laid out for the crisis at hand, but Garrosh pushed it aside in his rage. The scattered guards took notice, giving the orcs who had recovered the human from the crash site a wary glance as Garrosh approached.

He turned to the scouts, Kragul and Xar, whose initial pride had waned with their Overlord's reaction.

  
"That? _That_ is what you brought back?" asked the Overlord, gesturing toward the basement with an accusatory finger.  
  
"A human, sir, a survivor..."  
  
"Think maybe we turn 'em in to the Keep?" Xar asked innocently. Kragul looked immediately concerned, waving his hands dismissively, and defensively.  
  
"Listen Overlord, I told 'im Bloodfrenzy didn't have no more room—"  
  
"Bloodfrenzy?! You think this maggot is worth his time?"  
  
Just as Hellscream was ready to launch into a spit-flying rant, Saurfang reemerged from the basement and wedged himself into the group. "Never mind Bloodfrenzy. We'll keep it here."  
  
"Here?" Garrosh's face twisted with disapproval. "Why keep it at all?"  
  
"How else do you propose we extract intel? Shall we leave the process to Gork and his pigs?"  
  
"No, I... suppose not," he said sheepishly. "But where? Where do we keep it if not with the others? Our barracks will be full within the coming week."  
  
"Will it take you longer than a week?"  
  
"No," he snapped. "No, it won't."

  
Following closely behind Saurfang was the shaman with the washed and warmed prisoner. She had effortlessly slung it over her shoulders, as it apparently could not walk, and set it down on the floor. The limbs were all bound in bandages. It then slumped over on its knees in an oversized tunic, most likely one of the shaman's own.

  
"Saurfang," she addressed the High Overlord again. The gathered orcs turned to face her. "The human is stable."

  
With a nod of acknowledgment from Saurfang, she was dismissed. The prisoner remained, looking comatose after the whirlwind of events. The eyes were glazed over, clearly in a fog, and its jaw hung slack. It was hideous.

  
Garrosh hated humans. This one was no exception.

  
"So?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Make it talk."

  
At the beck of his superior, Overlord Hellscream advanced toward the prisoner who now began to shiver before him.

  
"Stand," slithered from his lips with repugnance. He hated the humans. And he hated the humans' language. He narrowed his eyes as the thing failed to obey.  
  
Saurfang crossed his arms. "You defy my orders to fetch this thing, Hellscream, then you'll make it talk."  
  
"Stand," he repeated, teeth grit. He didn't care if it talked. He wanted it dead. He wanted all of the humans dead.

  
Azeroth was alien to him—as it initially was to all orcs—and though he was new to it and its denizens, he was not ignorant to what his people had already suffered at the hands of humans. Within his own lifetime, orcs has been rounded up into internment camps and used for entertainment and slavery. Their own Warchief bore the name "Thrall", a prized gladiator until he broke free. Why he who was called Thrall sought any cooperation with his oppressors baffled and offended Garrosh. There was no point. These creatures were beyond reason and below consideration. Even now, this human refused to cooperate.

  
"I say you, STAND!" Garrosh snarled, forcing the human to its bandaged feet. Its knees buckled and it swayed, attempting to keep upright in its punchdrunk haze.  
  
"You roasting this pig with a candle, Hellscream? Get it to talk, I said! Sitting or standing or hacked into pieces—I don't care—just make it talk!"

  
As Garrosh turned to glare at the elder orc, the prisoner wilted against him. With an all-too-visceral disgust he shoved the withered human away and wiped at his tabard. The human stumbled backward toward the group of orcs and Xar instinctively punted it in the backs of its knees. It immediately crumpled to the ground and cried out in pain. The jury of surrounding orcs disapproved.

  
"Stop it," Garrosh spat, a tad too promptly. "If you're going to bring me a broken thing, at least keep it in one piece. It has made enough of a mess already."  
  
"So what we do with it now?" Kragul asked.  
  
"Awful shy, isn't it?" Varok suppressed a smile. "Cart it off to the barracks, men. The west room."  
  
"That's my room," Garrosh gaped at Kragul and Xar as they lifted the human up by its arms.  
  
"Sure is. You want this thing, then you'll have it."

  
\--

  
So, amidst the scrap metal and embers, the wolf riders had forgone supplies, resources, or even documents in favor of... that thing? The Overlord punished one step of the pathway a little harder than the others, leaving the center of the fortress toward the outer ring. Did these orcs not know to bring back tools, or insignias, or anything more useful than a single survivor?

"Survivor" was a loose term. The only part of you that wasn't damaged was your brain, most likely. And it was going to stay here? Hate humans, hate humans, hate it, hate it. He didn't want a human. He wanted information. He wanted receipts, books, letters, armor, rations—spirits—tabards, banners, _anything_ but an actual, barely-living, barely-breathing _human_...

He was exhausted. This farcical leadership was constricting, stifling. The warchief Thrall had named Garrosh his advisor and representative of the Mag'har—the orcs of his homeland who had not suffered the blood curse—to teach him the ways of old. The warchief spoke of greatness in the Hellscream lineage and the immortal successes of Grom Hellscream, his father. Garrosh was to lead the Mag'har in the stead of their dying elder, but Thrall had encouraged him to cut his people loose in favor of greater promise within the Horde. He would go on to inspire and empower the orcs and continue the late Grom's legacy.

Some promise this was. At every turn, Thrall rejected Garrosh's advice. Tagging along, silenced, called "Young Hellscream"—almost a replication of Garrosh's childhood, a place where he did not often look back. He could not be blamed for becoming frustrated! He is forced to sit and eat with humans, a species he'd rather blot out of existence for _enslaving his people_ , yet he is called bloodthirsty and treacherous. He is promised leadership in the Horde, yet is stymied at every proposal. He offers the most base of advice—to fight their enemy—yet the warchief who had shared such gilded stories of Garrosh's father responds by besmirching him in the next breath! Between the Theramore summit and the mak'gora, Garrosh was developing a reputation as a reckless, hot-blooded warrior.

And that was fine. Rather he had a hot head than cold feet. Especially in Northrend.

He felt that Thrall had offered him the title of Overlord of the Warsong Offensive to make amends, which he accepted graciously. But Garrosh was no fool. Varok Saurfang, too, was Thrall's advisor, and held the rank of High Overlord. He knew this was nothing but a puppet position, but Garrosh was determined to work the strings.

As he circled it, the fortress around him churned and creaked with productivity. The forges were running and the stables were full, but the engineers and stablehands were nowhere to be found. He scowled and ascended the walkway to the next tier. Marksmen huddled in the stone and steel archways, shirking their lookout duty. Typical, he thought. But not the slackers he was looking for. Ah, there they were, a motley crew languishing around the elves.

Elves. Elves were cunning but very annoying. Garrosh cut through their chatter with his overbearing presence, folding his hands behind his back.

  
"So, an elf wasn't the one who drew the bath, I take it?"  
  
"Overlord Hellscream," one in the group nods. "Did you bring any sin'dorei beauticians or handmaidens to Northrend?"  
  
He only glared.  
  
"Oh, no? Then why would you expect our people to manage such frivolities?"  
  
"No one else among the Horde has such thin human-flesh," Garrosh growled, his anger rising again. "Which is why I had specifically requested an _elf_ to draw a temperate bath! "  
  
"Ah. Your race is so ever practical," the elf said, unflappable. "Sorry about your bubble bath."  
  
Anger swelled to rage from the blatant disrespect, and he resisted the urge to strangle the woman. "Impudent elf, I should kill you myself for such insubordination! Were you all not made aware of the human within our walls?"  
  
"The _what?_ " the elf replied, the situation dawning on her.  
  
"Wait— what?" asked an orc, a blacksmith. "An Alliance coward? In here? What for?"  
  
"A survivor from a plane crash, heading toward an Alliance outpost. Were you told nothing?"

  
The group was stunned, shaking their heads. Garrosh raised his fists and shouted in frustration.

  
"A human! A human—possibly the sole survivor—in possession of some crucial and potentially delicate information." Garrosh moved a few paces as he spoke to curb his anger. "We beat the troops from Valiance Keep to the scene, providing us a useful bargaining chip. All they will find are bodies."  
  
"Oh, sir!" exclaimed a tauren, another shaman. "Yes, I provided the herbal remedy you requested. But it may be a while before we hear anything. I... didn't realize it was so serious. Though the medicinal bath should ease the wounds enough to—"  
  
"Ah yes, which brings us back to the bath." The Overlord's face creased in disgust. "The one that almost succeeded in _further BOILING_ the prisoner!" The group flinched before Hellscream's temper.  
"The bath shall ease NOTHING with water hot enough to burn an orc! Imagine how it shriveled the human!"  
  
The smart-mouthed elf was now being towered over. "Which is why I explicitly ordered AN ELF, yet she seems unable to execute even THAT simple of a task! You would do well to wear your pride beneath your HEEL in my keep."  
  
Garrosh stalked back and forth in front of the group, weaponizing every word in a verbal assault. "So, if not the elf, who is responsible? I need this one _alive_."

  
Glances were shared across the group, wondering who would take the hit. A blood elf magister moved to cross his arms, but warily kept them at his sides.

  
Gravelly grumbling built up in Garrosh's throat. "I went in to interrogate and found an unconscious half-corpse covered in its own spit! And with zero supervision, as I assume THOSE orders were yet followed as well. This is UNACCEPTABLE!"  
  
"But sir, we weren't told—"  
  
"Worthless peons," he muttered. "They bring in this refuse only to fail to carry out my orders for it! How this 'Horde' tests my patience..."

  
The group shifted in uncomfortable silence until the tauren woman spoke again.

  
"I had offered to call to the elements, Overlord, but Eorain said the forge would—"  
  
"Don't pin this on me! Groll almost wasted all of your mixture by brazenly dumping it in cold water. We were obligated to accelerate the heating process—"  
  
"I didn't know what it was for! What's it matter if it's cold?"  
  
"Are you all so childlike to push the blame?" Garrosh scowled. "Then you are all responsible! And I thusly charge you all with the monitoring of the prisoner."

  
Exasperation flung itself over the group. Elf and orc and tauren and troll exchanged looks of disbelief among themselves. 

  
"Overlord Hellscream, we are but merchants! How would we—"  
  
"However you can. However you need to. Make sure the human lives long enough to tell us what we need to know."  
  
"But—and forgive me, Overlord—there have been deserters barking at our gates since we set up base, and we've delivered them all."  
  
"Soldiers, yes. But this is a civilian."  
  
"A civilian?" Eorain, the blood elf magister, raised a brow. "You... understand you're taking a prisoner of war."  
  
"Pretty sure he did say prisoner," the blacksmith grinned.  
  
"There is no one alive to know it is missing. And we are a continent away from any possible kin." Garrosh glared at Eorain. "What is the issue? Have you sympathy for the wretch?"  
  
"I—"  
  
"For it is treason if you do."  
  
"...No, sir."

  
The group's collective posture eased, placated by the possibility of any leg up on the Alliance in the tundra. 

  
"So that's the plan. We get the intel—however long it takes. And when we do, we'll dispose of the body. The Alliance won't know any different, and we will have the upper hand."  
  
"Never thought the Horde one for torture," Lindarel, a scholarly-looking elf, said.  
  
The Overlord laughed, mouth wide and flashing teeth. Elves. It's always elves. "A state like that is torture enough! The human is weak and broken, begging for death like any Alliance coward. But we will aid the human, and for sparing its life it is already indebted to us."  
  
"Orcish hospitality!" Groll, the orc merchant, mocked.  
  
"It is not hospitality. It is strategy. If the information dies with it, we will have lost a great opportunity. So take care of it. Keep it alive as long as you can," Garrosh said, looking among the arrangement of races about the room.  
  
"Respect to you, Overlord," the tauren shaman cut in. "But that will be quite a feat."  
  
"It will not be for long. Saurfang said it... won't last more than a week," said the Overlord, a bit embarrassed to have deferred to his higher authority earlier. "But if we can get any insight into Alliance operations, it is a small gamble."  
  
"Salves are cheap," the troll alchemist said. "We ain't got much to lose."  
  
"The human will speak soon." The group watched the brown orc rub his hands together. "I am sure of it. This exchange will end sooner than our discussion of it."

  
Seemingly satisfied, the Overlord sauntered away, leaving his shaken underlings with the chore of tending to their enemy.

  
\--

You do not dream. You do not wake. You only seep, reluctantly, into and out of consciousness, though your physicality lags behind. Your bones are building themselves back together, your muscles and tendons still weaving themselves into place about them; it may be long before your nerves are back online. You are emulsified in a coat of binding numbness, a thorough mixture of shock and fatigue, and thusly lay still. Very still.

Voices carry in the cavernous reaches of the Horde fortress. You must be alive, then. Does one sleep in the afterlife? Isn't the afterlife itself supposed to be eternal rest?

The machinery in your neck turns as the hands of a clock, ticking appropriate, approximate, at its uniform pace. One cannot rush a minute. One cannot slow a second. Unit by unit, your chin arcs until your cheek presses against your sleeping surface. A furred animal skin lies flat against the stone floor, and you flat against it.

You watch the walls, now. You have done this many times.

You are not looking forward to doing this again tomorrow.

  
==

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MMMM BUDDY I have been working on this chapter for ACTUAL MONTHS and I'm so happy I finally got it to come together. Thank you all for the nice comments and kudos! I had no idea this would get more than a few hits especially with so little published. The good (bad?) news is that we're up to a whoppin 25k words (a hearty li'l 155kb notepad document) so there is certainly more to come... just not yet. I've got [mental] outlines for how i want ch. 3 and 4 to go so maybe it'll be sooner than this one, but i can't say for sure. again, thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

The majority of your first few days are spent asleep. Any wakefulness is endured in a daze of fluctuating temperatures, environments, and species tending to you. You were moved from room to room, from furs to bath, bath to furs, never fully dressed in more than bandages and a tunic. You were a baton passed from one Horde creature to the next, sweating and shivering all the while.

Dozens of times throughout the days you would "come to" in the midst of a soak, screaming in terror that you were boiling in the pools at the crash site. Promptly a flurry of hands all shapes and sizes would rise up and seize you, forcibly tranquilizing you through numerous different methods. One orc, fed up with your uncontrollable screaming, kept your head underwater for nearly a full minute. A blood elf forced a vial down your throat that you suspected was a minor poison, as you vomited for several hours afterward.  
  
You remember an instance of a Forsaken man prodding you with different instruments, speaking something that certainly sounded like Common but definitely was not the Common tongue. Anything that might have been in your language—the language of living humans in the Eastern Kingdoms—made no reasonable sense. And for all you know he could have harvested a wealth of your organs. All you recall is a roulette of hands and faces, all Horde; and, of course, the pain.

As far as questioning, it seemed rather unusual compared to how you thought things would go. Not that you had ever been a prisoner before, but things were suspiciously lax. Once or twice some minuteman would give a half-baked interrogation, asking what you knew.

"I'm just a trapper. I joined the Valiance Expedition so I could learn about the animals in Northrend. But the flying machine went down... somehow. And nerubians attacked us from the burrows... they were below the pools. I made it to the highest ground I could—that's how they—the Horde, they found me on the high ground. Now I'm here."

That was all, but they weren't happy with that. So they asked a few more times, but didn't press for anything else. They verified that you were a civilian, over and over, and your bland confusion assured them you weren't lying. You were just some dumb hunter: lucky to be alive, but probably not for long. You felt weak, disoriented, and on top of everything else, were getting sick.

A new pain surfaces, a wrenching in your gut folding in on itself and cramping. You haven't eaten since the morning you flew to Northrend. You bite your lip as your stomach cries out. Then, the feeling now all too familiar, you cough so hard your vision goes white.  
  
  
\--  
  
  
High Overlord Varok Saurfang continued to read the letters of correspondence by moonlight.

They had anticipated the bulk of Horde ships arriving within the coming week—a delay the Warsong Offensive had previously dreaded—but there was plenty to do before they could hope to approach Icecrown Citadel. Interrogating a prisoner of war would be the easiest on the list. If anything, it would keep the Hellscream boy occupied.

He set the letters down and sighed.

Saurfang surmised the orphan's idle hands were to blame for his temper and recklessness, aside from his bloodline. He did not aim to render him a straw general by any means; Garrosh just needed time and exposure to come into his own. He knew this too was the Warchief's goal and agreed with the idea. Thrall had kindled Garrosh's newfound confidence, though Saurfang was slightly averse to this.

  
He had warned Thrall beforehand that Garrosh's soul was sick. 

"We are orphans of war, the two of us," Thrall had smiled, humbled by his recent excursion to Outland. "In that kinship, I know it is hope Garrosh needs. He must know he is valid, but his fears unfounded. Grommash was my brother and a hero to our people. For this, I have great faith in him. He must know."

This "validation" was bloating like a shrubby weed, rooted more in the name than the Mag'har's individual skills or wisdom (which were present and to be trusted, Saurfang knew, as the greatmother would not cast her people aside for the sake of nepotism). Despite the younger orc's intellect wrought by his... peculiar introversion and obsessive rumination, Varok felt Garrosh would not be here were he not Hellscream.

"I am more than a legacy," the Mag'har had boldly said. "I am the future."

 _One I will prevent if I can help it,_  thought Saurfang. Grom had ascended to Warchief not even two decades into his life; his son was years beyond that, yet he did not come close to sharing that maturity. He was terribly impatient and constantly distracted, but his unconventional ideas and unpredictable timing often resulted in wild success. Some orcs had interpreted this as Garrosh being three steps ahead, his actions irrational to those without his foresight, while others figured his knee-jerk idiocy was eclipsed by his dumb luck. Saurfang had thumbs in both eyes, as it were.

If Garrosh had something concrete to focus on and fight for with an explicit objective, he had proven he could succeed. Excel, even. And there was no greater cause, no greater reward, than to fight for the Horde.

 

"...Do you trust my counsel, Warchief?" The question had been tentative.  
  
"Of course, Varok. Speak your mind."  
  
"I believe Hellscream is fundamentally unstable."  
  
"Indeed. But I believe the structure of the Horde will keep his soul from wandering. He has a cause to fight for."  
  
"Hmm."  
  
"The Horde is a suitable anchor. Do you disagree?"  
  
"An anchor only suits when you're the one weighing it. Garrosh thrashes against any tying-down, even if it saves him from drowning."  
  
"Rehgar used the word 'chafing', if I recall, under my leadership," the Warchief remembered with a velvety chuckle. "He is a keen warrior and knows now where to drive this strength."

  
Thrall's statement sounded final, but the topic clearly was not settled.

  
"You know I lay my life down for you, Thrall."  
  
"I do."  
  
"I think even as he fights, he will feel caged."  
  
"When he fights, he feels useful. When he feels useful, he is satisfied. To utilize his talents as an Overlord shall help to free his mind."  
  
"Bloodlust may have vacated my mind, but it did not 'free' it. It made me its prisoner."  
  
  
For this, the shamanic Warchief had no response. Saurfang pressed the issue.  
  
  
"Garrosh completes a task only so it is complete. He does it well, yes, to ensure he does not have to do it again. He should not seek clarity in killing."  
  
"Be transparent with me, Varok. What is it you are saying?"  
  
"What is the end goal of maintaining the Horde, my Warchief?"  
  
"Why—" Thrall stammered, disrupted by the question. "Surely, it is survival—it is peace. The Horde is family—to say there is an 'end goal' to family is—"  
  
"Is it not love, Warchief?"  
  
Thrall's eyes sparkled, more blue than ever. "Ultimately, I suppose..."  
  
"Peace, nor love, is ever 'complete'. You work hard at them and watch them grow and grow."  
  
"Yes, though I—"  
  
"Garrosh does not understand that. Neither did his father. Hellscream only finishes with death."  
  
"...Will you not go with him to Northrend?" Thrall asked, a tad concerned.  
  
"I shall. And I am positive his work against the Scourge shall be impeccable. Damn impeccable," Saurfang muttered with a bit of admiration.  
  
"He is a wily one." The Warchief smiled.  
  
"I hold no doubts. I wish only to assuage you of any responsibility in attempting to cure what ails the boy. Progress will be slow, if there is any at all. But also that he will resist your vision of the Horde, as it is in his nature to do so."  
  
"That may be," Thrall nodded. "He will fight it. He will fight me, as we have fought before. But he will learn. With an enemy as relentless as the Scourge, he will learn to pace himself. Or he may receive the death you say he is so eager to purchase."  
  
Which would be a shame, they had both agreed.  
  
  
Before the Hold was built further inland, the small settlement erected where the Horde first reached Northrend was dubbed "Garrosh's Landing". Saurfang could not imagine there was much pride to it now, swallowed by mists and crawling with kvaldir, giant spectral seaweed-men that terrorized the coastline and forced them to flee.   
  
Perhaps Thrall was right. Garrosh may temper himself knowing some tasks were not as easily accomplished through rampant bloodshed and pride.  
  
"You are wise, my dear friend." Thrall had placed his hand on Varok's shoulder. "I am grateful for your honesty."

  
\-- 

  
They had discarded you like a ragdoll in the center of the Hold. One of the elves whined about carrying you and put you down on the ground by the tactical maps, where you were now a self-proclaimed expert on the empty geography of Tanaris. You did your best not to pass out on the floor, a battle you were losing until heavy footfalls stirred you alert.

Garrosh Hellscream came into the room, almost unrecognizable beneath his full encasement of armor. He obliviously strode past you and unhitched a polearm mounted on the wall, spiraling it in his hands then tossing it to the ground with a startling thud. The weapon alone must have weighed more than two of you.

You kept your limbs close, pinned to your sides. Only your eyes shifted to watch him. He cracked his knuckles and retrieved the polearm, butting the blunt end in loud, metallic staccatos on the stone floor. How effortlessly he held it, like an oversized fishing spear. It looked so, too, in his massive grip.

His hands were weighted like iron, solid and dense. Enormous and foreboding, you imagined his hands closing around your head. With a single clap, like a pestering fly, he could shatter your skull. A rap of his knuckles could break your teeth. His hand could clasp completely over your face like a mask and asphyxiate you.

Barbaric, brutal; all common tactics of the Horde. This monstrousness was a bonding element to all within it. Rams locking horns, everyone needed the ability to tolerate one another. How ferocious, then, to command respect and dominance among these towering, bestial people. The Overlord stood heads wider and taller than most, matched or superseded only by tauren (of which there were seldom few in the Hold).

A hollow whistle sang through the air, the polearm slicing into the Abyssal Sands of Tanaris just beyond your toes. You felt the desert heat, arid and thick, materializing behind you as a spectre and casting a shadow over you and the map.

He casually procures the weapon from the floor and walks out.

  
\--

 _It will know to fear me._  The polearm's handle audibly scrapes the ceiling as it moves down the length of the corridor. _I will get what I want._

  
\--

  
After your final soak earlier that evening, Garrosh had come into the basement to apparently scold anybody and everybody in it. Tonight it had been Tansy, the tauren herbalist, who took care of you, and therefore received the brunt of his screaming. He would have slammed the door upon his exit were it not a curtain, and that had been Tansy's cue to hastily ball you up in bandages and follow him out. Less like a loyal dog and more like a scolded child, she trailed closely behind.

Such was the ritual. You had to be carried anywhere you went, but it was never Garrosh who carried you; he only ever made an appearance to escort you and a caretaker to his personal barracks to sleep for the night. His presence was one of the only ways you could keep track of time, mind and memory so splintered by blackouts and trauma.

 

That night, his hands fill your nightmares. You awake with a start, gasping for air and drenched in sweat, skin teeming with discomfort. The dark gray ceiling hangs over you, nonplussed.

It was modest for a bedroom but a palace compared to the military standard. Garrosh held one corner of the room and had sequestered you to the other, facing you as he slept, expecting to spring to life at your every sound and movement. If he had heard you just now, he was doing a good job of ignoring you.

You stare at the billowing curtain in the doorway behind him. You are fighting off the lingering memories of your nightmares, of his hammer-hands beating your face in, but there is nothing to focus on but him and the doorway.

Can't sleep.

You try not to look at his hands. But there they are, bound in fists. You watch his eyelids, so terrified they will snap open.

Freezing. So much pain.

Can't sleep.

Stomach gurgles again. Haven't eaten...

The ache is strong. Hurts. It hurts.

Try not to cry. Don't make a sound. He will hear you. Most definitely, he will hear you.

You groan in your corner. Legs ache. Want to scratch them. Itches.

Can't. Skin will come off. Skin comes off if you scratch any more.  
  
Bandages itch. Legs itch. Itches.  
  
Itches.

Can't sleep.  
  
Can't sleep.  
  
Rustling, now.  
  
Roll over. Roll over.

He stands. He is coming.  
  
Do not let him come. Keep his hands away. Keep him away.

He is coming. His feet, so loud. His hands, dangerous. Danger. Dangerous.  
  
He is coming. He is dangerous.  
  
He is close.  
  
He is closer.  
  
The noises have stopped.

 

Heat, like a steaming vent in the earth, radiates beside you. If only it could swallow you up. If only you would fall in, if you would burn like you should have. Burn like you should have. Burn, scalding, in the earth.  
  
HE IS HERE. FALL INTO THE EARTH.  
  
Itches.  
  
DANGER.  
  
BURN LIKE YOU SHOULD HAVE.

Shudder, shudder, HE IS HERE, shivering, fever, shudder, HE IS HERE, shudder, shiver, HE IS HERE, HE IS HERE, ALONE, HE IS HERE.  
  
Hungry, hungry, the noises do not stop now.

HANDS HIS HANDS ON YOU HANDS ON YOU

  
\-- 

  
The human is unspeakably light and unexpectedly frail. It writhes in his hands, a reddened and squirming newborn. The legs kick limply and the whole body shudders in his hand-and-a-half, lifted by its neck.

Garrosh watches it, observant. It is very, very weak. But there is something else.  
  
"You are like a leaden thing wrapped in cloth," he muses aloud. "Those at the summit speak boldly, but they know how they would shrink in my grasp. Save for perhaps their king."

The thing is shuddering still. It sure is afraid of him. That's good. Though he wishes he didn't have to keep it in his room. It stinks a little and won't stop shaking and whimpering. Beaten dogs have more fight in them.

"I do not sit at tables with humans. I crush them in my fists, as I will so easily with you if you do not speak." Was most likely useless. Living compost if anything.

"You are afraid of me?" he grins. Its eyes stay shut and it starts to cry.  
  
He holds it away from him with a snort. "Is that all you do? Cry? I cannot infiltrate the Alliance with tears. Even the human king's sniveling boy-pup gave me words."  
He closes his fingers tighter around its neck. Its blotchy hands fly toward him.

"But you still wish to live?" He cannot help but laugh. "Then speak!"  
  
"Speak!" He repeats his demand in the human tongue.

It blithers some babbling nonsense, something in its idiot language. Then, like an upturned bug, it folds in on itself, arms and legs bent up and kept close. A creaking, groaning noise comes from its guts and it clutches its stomach. The crying becomes quiet, its gross, protruding nose sniffling. The stomach groans again.

He drops the shriveled creature in a pathetic heap and leaves, tight-lipped.

  
\--

  
A group of dwarves in the Thorium Brotherhood had once come to Stormwind seeking aid in the Searing Gorge and the nearby mountains. The Redridge mountain range peaked quite literally at the ominous Blackrock mountain, over which many gray-skinned, drake-riding orcs presided. War efforts aside, the dwarves had brought with them a recipe for "dragonbreath chili", a stew of sorts comprised of heavy chunks of meat and assorted legumes. The secret ingredient, the "dragonbreath", was the flame sac from the dragon's throat, adding an innate heat and spice of sorts unlike anything else in the Eastern Kingdoms.

Though not as flavorful, it was your only point of reference for the rations awaiting you in the morning by your meager bedside: chunks of unknown meat and shriveled lentils.  
You glance around the room while cradling the rations possessively. There is no one in sight.  
  
You make sure you are alone, then eat ravenously.

==

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a hefty chapter, a trend that will continue! hope youre enjoyin the dumpster dive through some major projecting on my part, lol.


	4. Chapter 4

You threw it up.

You kept vomiting the next two times you tried to eat, too. Eventually your diet petered down to bread and water, though bread was a generous term for the tough hunks you gnawed your way through. But, it forced you to eat slower. Between trauma and sickness, your innards were working overtime in hopes of maintaining equilibrium. So you had stale-turned-soggy bread chunks to suck on, first soaked in water and then, once you were able, in a mild vegetable broth. That was herbal, too, and at this point almost indistinguishable from the bath water. Everything was. Your skin, your tears, your spit, your food, your drink—all of it—might as well be thrown out with the bath water.

Again, this was where you spent most of your time, so more often than not you ate in the bath as well. It might have been decadent were you not gagging on prison food in a pool of your own dead skin and filth. No matter how disgusting, you could not afford to vomit any more. Your throat felt so raw, so dry, you were tempted to drink up the bath itself, skin flakes and all.

  
\--

  


It had fallen solely onto the shoulders of Tansy Wildmane to take care of the prisoner.

Although—with good reason. Her skills were not useful anywhere else; at least, not yet. There were no real herbs to speak of in the tundra except for batches of goldclover. She called it that because it was gold in color, and it appeared to be a kind of clover. Now was not the time to think of a nicer-sounding name, unfortunately. They had landed in Northrend barely within the last week and everyone was already really stressed out. So goldclover was a fine enough name for now. They were gold, they were clovers, they were everywhere, but their practical properties were very few. The Offensive's scouts had traveled as far as the bloodspore plains and found a couple of fronds, stalks hard as wood and covered in blood red vesicles. That was probably why the orcs named the plains that, too, as orcs cared the most about practicality. Practicality, and honor.

Orgrimmar, for Orgrim Doomhammer. Durotar, for Durotan of the Frostwolf clan. The Barrens, as it was barren. Blackrock Mountain. It did have black rocks, after all. So they liked the name goldclover, but they did not like that it was not very useful. And they named the fields after the plant that they had named bloodspore, which also did not appear to do much except make people kind-of itchy.

  
"You need female versions of the plant for proper testing," Tansy had suggested.  
  
"Plant's a plant," one of the grunts had said.  
  
"Well, if these conical pods do produce spores as the name suggests, then we need—"  
  
"We already got a whole squadron out in the fields. They'll come back will all sorts of boy plants and girl plants so you can break your brain sniffing spores all day long." The pair had laughed at her.

  
But the squadron had not yet returned. Thus, the best place Tansy's herbalist knowledge could be applied was to the human prisoner's poultice baths, or so said Overlord Hellscream. She prepared them daily, steeping in bundles of herbs that she knew contained regenerative properties.

The human had been cooperative so far. And quite attentive, really! It wasn't talking yet, so it was a little difficult to make friends. But it did listen, and it didn't squirm when she had to wash it. And so that is a good thing.

She always tried to be gentle. The same could not be said for the others in the Hold. She knew this because she heard them talk about it. And the things that they said made her feel bad for the human, though she could never admit such a thing aloud. It was still a living creature, even if it was allied with the enemy. Though, she had heard it wasn't even a soldier. So why were they all so mean to it? Why was it even here?

It was best not to ask any questions. She did as she was told and extended kindnesses whenever she could, using whipped soap or flakes instead of the hard laundry bars (which often had too much lye anyway). And that is what she did now, seated at the tub once again. 

  
"This is the best," Tansy smiled at the human, holding out a small ceramic jar. "Since it's really smooth, it's much easier to lather in fur. So you know tauren like it." She winked.  
  
"What? What are you saying?" Overlord Hellscream barked in Orcish from the darkness on the other side of the room. He insisted on supervising, at least for the first few minutes. He, too, had heard what the others had been saying.  
  
"I'm describing the soap," she said in his language.  
  
"What for? Ask it what it knows." Garrosh crossed his arms with a harumph.  
  
She turned and asked in Common, "Can you tell us why you're here?"

  
It opened its mouth to speak, then let out a bad cough. It sniffed and wiped its nose, taking a little while to recover.

  
"You know, I think it's getting sick, Overlord." Tansy looked at him with the biggest, wettest eyes she could. "If we don't intervene, it will surely die before we hear anything."

  
The Overlord's face got a lot of lines on it. His eyes almost disappeared under his big orc brow. He was thinking.

  
"It has food and water. Is that not enough?" he asked finally.  
  
"Sir, it is very afraid. Of all of us. Shouldn't we show some compassion?"  
  
He laughed. " _Compassion?_ It is my _prisoner!_ "  
  
"Perhaps if we're nicer to it, it will be more willing to talk to us. I think it's even starting to like me a little. And you know what they say: you catch more flies with honey."  
  
"Who says that? What does that mean? I do not need flies. I need reports on the Alliance developments north and south of the Hold, the contents of the aircraft, the gnomish technology, the number of infantry currently stationed at the Keep—any scrap of intelligence I can peel off its tongue. It stinks enough, I do not need its flies too."  
  
"It's an expression, Overlord. It means that if you are nice to people, they'll—"  
  
"I will have anyone who says such nonsense strung up by their ankles. You should express only what you mean. We cannot afford any miscommunication."  
  
"Well," she began, carefully choosing her words. "It's coughing. Maybe its throat is too sore to talk. Perhaps you would allow me to administer some medicine?"  
  
"It is with great generosity that I permit the baths at all. We must not sacrifice anything else."  
  
"But it could die. Prematurely," she tried.  
  
"So be it." He shrugged. "I am already sickened of it."  
  
"Then I am sorry to have wasted our herbs and learned nothing. I guess High Overlord Saurfang was right."

  
Garrosh huffed, then looked around the room. He stepped closer to her and lowered his voice.

  
"What can you use among your current provisions?"  
  
"Water, liferoot, sansam, silversage... with some goldthorn, I could brew a tea. It will soothe the throat, and rehydrate too."  
  
"Fine," the orc reluctantly agreed, stepping toward the door. "For its throat. So it talks."  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
" _Not_ compassion."

  
And so, it became routine to lower a flask into the bath while it was hot, before the human got in, and steep it with some goldthorn brambles. Then the human would soak as usual. Once the water cooled, Tansy offered the flask to drink, finishing the treatment with hot goldthorn tea. She thought of sweetening it with honey or cream; but that was only her idea, and not her order. So she didn't.

  
\--

  
They must fail to grasp how... unprofitable this venture was. But they would continue to stick him with it, and so he had to own it. Either he would find a new use for you, or he would make it look like an accident. 

  
\--

  
When the caretaker took you to bed that night, you were awash with relief. Tauren are truly the most benevolent creatures on Azeroth. She had championed you; it was by her hand—her soft, warm, tender hands—that you got to eat at all. She must have brought you the dragonbreath chili when Garrosh had most likely complained about your feebleness. She carried you to the sleeping quarters, she washed you with care, she changed your bandages and even your clothes. She did everything, yet Tansy knew you were still a person. Around her, you still felt like one.

A chill sat hard and spiny in your core. Pulling the sleeping furs closer, you whispered your thankfulness to the Light. You never acknowledged the Light much, but you would need more than your hope in Tansy to keep from shivering.

  
\--

  
It was still late, according to the darkness, when Garrosh heard you laughing in your sleep.

Greatmother always said it meant the ancestors were calling to them; sometimes people were in so much pain that their dreams were the only place they could find peace. In dreams you could visit the spirits for free, free of everything, and if you liked it better than your life, they would let you stay. And it was true, for any of the "gigglers" in Garadar crossed over within a number of days. Those who didn't—who straddled between worlds and staved off their beckoning—often kept their bodies but not their minds, which explained much of the Laughing Skull clan.

Personally, Garrosh thought maybe others had gone and slit their throats in their sleep, the laughing of the quarantined sometimes so raucous and unnerving that it had to be stopped by force. They would be fast asleep, their bodies motionless but their heads lolling on their furs with feverish, howling laughter. Convulsing, oozing pus and blood, voices wan with painful yelping and cackling. He had spent so many anxious nights picking at his skin and fighting sleep, hoping they would die and being terrified of meeting his ancestors in a dream.

His hands trembled above your neck, contemplating choking you.

IF IT LAUGHS AGAIN, I WILL KILL IT.

But you were still, and made no noise. After several minutes of silence, the orc finally slunk back to his side of the room. He lied flat on his back and watched the clouds obscure the moonlight reflected on the ceiling.

If you are laughing already, perhaps you are not much longer for this world. Good. The sooner this week was over, the better.

He snickered mischievously to himself, a pleased grin plastered on his face as he floated toward sleep.

He used the last of his wakefulness to ignore the sound of you snickering with him.

==

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have spent months, again, trying to get this chapter to come together, and it ended up so long that I'm splitting it into two different ones. so this half is shorter than I'd like but I'm just cutting my losses and publishing what I have until the meatier half is ready. hopefully it will arrive on the heels of this one. thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

It was lucky, really, that the basin had burst, as it was easier to slide around the wet stone floor that way. Easier to get to a place to hide from them. Their forelegs or claws or pincers—those sharp buggy parts—punctured each tub they passed, which spilled the water in yours and splintered the others.

The perimeter guards were overrun and some peons were taken down instantly. Their blood crept pink and gray over the spillage and their bodies unfortunately made an obstruction by the adjacent door. Zandali curses flew with every arrow from the troll marksmen, their blue, lanky arms cut up and limp.

You crouched behind an empty tub. The nerubians' tall, rigid forms saw over all. Hopefully the darkness would conceal you.

There was a time, back then, when you had heard a grown man get pulled into the undertow, back when you were going up the coastline and doing your best to avoid the naga. A small group had gathered and you heard the sound—the sole, final sound—of water filling his lungs, squelching his scream, thick and rippling and flattened into a deep, heavy line. The people watched on, unsure of what to do. He was far from the shore, and the tide raked the sand so deliberately that everyone's tacit agreement had been to stay put. All of you watched helplessly. The low, choking struggle settled hard and jagged in everyone's ears. And then it went away from his mouth, but the sound stayed nestled in your mind. He bobbed for much longer than that, silent, hair like algae.

"That's what it is, you know," your old sitter once said, just to scare you. You remembered the way the lantern glowed his face up like a Hallow's End pumpkin, orange light hitting his chin and becoming lost in the shadows of his brow. "It's their hair. They sink to the bottom and their hair turns green and sticks to it. It isn't grass. It's the hair of drowned men." You knew it wasn't true, but it sunk to the bottom and stuck to you.

Another tub burst. You waded further through the film of water spread on the cold ground, shivering, biting your lip so your teeth wouldn't chatter. Nerubians burrowed up into the basement in droves, relentless despite the guards' arrows and the peons' clubs.

The number of tubs to hide behind was dwindling. The sheer weight and number of their legs smashed the debris into even smaller shavings, rendering those impossible to hide in as well. Bug-like, too, following suit with the invaders, you spread out to stride across the surface tension.

Splintered wood and dead bodies were piling up. The basement was becoming smaller. The handfuls of marksmen trickling in kept the attentions of the nerubians, but their steadily stacking corpses made the basement smaller and smaller. Both exits were now inaccessible: one due to bodies; one due to stairs.

Forelegs flung orcs and trolls and even a tauren or two against the walls, shaking some with such force that the arms and legs sloughed off. Like a roving gang of street bandits, the aqiri frisked the smaller races for the proverbial gold pieces in their pockets, turning them upside down and indifferently shucking them of their limbs. Whatever they were looking for, they were not finding it. And they were furious.

Naked and afraid, you crouched behind some dead peons. There wasn't much hope. They were tearing the place apart and overturning every scrap and shard to find what they were looking for. They would come for you eventually and you had no way to defend yourself. No armor, no weapons... no legs. More archers fell and more basins broke—the basement shrinking as it filled with corpses and creatures and water—and all you could do was watch helplessly.

Every roar from the nerubians sounded like grown men in the undertow.

  
\--

  
"I _forbid_ it!" Saurfang heatedly closed the discussion with Garrosh.  
  
"If there is a lich in the fields ahead it should be dealt with!" Garrosh's fists balled up.  
  
"I said that I forbid it! It will be there lurking as long as it likes. We do not yet have the resources to take it on."  
  
"So what shall we do with all that lies west of us? The fields we tilled? The peon encampments?"  
  
"I do not know!" Saurfang grinned with flashing eyes. "No one knows! Do you see the severity of our situation yet? It is but one lich, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, prowling the entire continent! This is just the start, young Hellscream! And I will not have you throwing the small number of recruits we have to their doom for just one of them!"  
  
"You and your 'new Horde' are so content to hide and starve—"

 

A ruckus echoed up the stairwell from the bowels of the Hold. The orcs looked at each other. A spectral-sounding wail floated above the din.

  
"What was that?"

  
The pair looked around, then Saurfang hustled up the ramp to the upper tier for a guard. An orc slumped lazily against the wall, digging in his ear with his smallest finger.

  
"You there! Gather your—where is the rest of your squadron?"  
  
"Oh. Saurfang, sir!" The orc sloppily slapped his chest in a salute. "Uh, they went down a while ago to check. Told me t' stay here 'cause they'd be back in a second."  
  
"But they aren't back, are they?"  
  
"Nuh. But the human-thing screams all the time. Those're just the dreams again, sir. Thinks it's drowning."

  
More screams erupted from the basement over the deep, flanging crashes of wood and water.

  
"It very well may be!" Varok's nostrils flared and he gripped the rail, shouting down to Garrosh at the bottom of the ramp. "Grab your weapons and what recruits you can! We're being besieged!"

  
\--

  
They were coming closer. You were still a full body, even if you didn't feel that way, and you knew the nerubians would dismember you before throwing your orts to the pile. Dead hands brushed your face as you tried to hide among the corpses. A blue troll fist, now turning gray, still clutched a bow. Her lacerated back, lying a few paces away from her fist, had a quiver strung onto it. Eight, no— eleven arrows.

The ground teemed with dozens of burrowers, waves undulating across the floor as their many legs splashed in the direction their overseers bid. There were five overseers altogether, more sleek and sentient than the stout drones at their feet. They marched along, upright and regal as if their kingdoms had never fallen, heads fanned out like crowns.

An easy target. But arming oneself not-so-literally was a different matter.

A clamor from the floor above turned the nerubians' attentions upward, and you sprung at the opportunity. You wriggled through the twisted mass of bodies to get close enough to the strewn pieces of the poor woman. Yes, eleven arrows, and now strung onto your back instead. Quite a nice Darkspear bow as well, carved from dark wood and anointed with Zandali markings that were etched with such fluidity they appeared painted on. You hoped that they were enchanted with some kind of a blessing; you were going to need it. Even with all five overseers taken out, the six remaining arrows would not be enough to stymie the avalanche of angry underlings. What to do.

The bow began to speak, you think, and you hesitated. You heard Zandali whispers.

  
"Hunter. Hunter."  
  
Zandali in accent, but not in tongue. A troll from atop the pile, bleeding out from his amputated leg, reached his bruised arms out to you.  
  
"Tunnel," he strained, barely cobbling together the syllables to say it. "The tunnel—"

  
He faltered, the weight of two bodies settling anew upon him. The mountain of bodies shifted with the crunching of bones and splashing of water. The bow started to tumble away and you reached for it too late. Everything began to sink, slow and precarious, as if the floor had fallen though to quicksand. The overseers, too, took notice. One whose head was especially crested fixated all of its groups of eyes upon you, all of those black pools drilling their slick, dead gaze into you, quiet and knowing. Then, they struck oil.

Scores of tunnelers burst through the bodies, screeching and flailing in a phalanx with a roaring behemoth at the helm: a massive beetle-looking creature with a heavily armored carapace. The smaller nerubians swarmed like mad as the large one bored its way to the front, opening a wider maw into the dug-out caverns below and forcing the basement floor to collapse.

The bath water drained from the basement and flooded into the tunnels, dragging and swallowing you and all of the Horde bodies with it. Like waves in the tide you let yourself be carried, down and down into the darkness, eyelashes fluttering like the algae. You were all letting it happen—all of you, helpless—the dark iron walls groaning in an apathetic dirge as they caved.

Fighters to the bitter end, the corpses gave their final stand as they fell through, the sheer volume of them crushing some nerubians and stopping up some of the weaker pathways. You knew the fallen Horde pouring into the tunnel were opening up the blockage at the surface. But you could not reach it now. As one door opens, you remember, another closes.

You choked on the thinning air, straining your neck above the compounding dirt and rising water and stink of bodies plugging up the tunnel. The last dusty beams of light scratched your eyes as you looked back. The compressed wall of sound—shifting dirt, nerubian shrieks, the thrumming of water—pounded deep within your brain, thudding dull and distant in your skull. It was too dark to see, too foul to breathe, too maddening to listen, and too crowded to move. Everything began to narrow. Bodies still streamed into the tunnel and the slot you occupied was beginning to fill up.

And for a moment you believed in the loa, for the blue-gray fist, bow still in stiffening hand, smacked you across the face and teetered most delicately within your grasp.

Wrenching an arm just so, nearly popping it out of the socket, you meandered it through three others to grab the bow. With slightly more ease, you reached behind for an arrow from the pilfered quiver. The Zandali runes illuminated at your touch with a cold blue light—they _were_ whispering—and when you pulled back and fired, the arrow surged forth in a bolt of crackling lightning and tore the darkness apart like cloth.

  
\--

  
As they hurried down to the basement, the younger orc surprisingly found a slight difficulty in keeping up with his superior. Saurfang held his axe in both hands with great ease as if it were an extension of his very self. Garrosh dual-wielded twin axes, for he knew that to be one-armed is to be unarmed.

  
"Blessed ancestors," Saurfang cursed, stopping mid-step at the sight he beheld. Garrosh nearly crashed into him, but too was taken aback by the water churning beneath the army of marching nerubian legs and lapping at the shredded remains of their marksmen. They hovered at the top of the stairs, just out of sight of the infestation below.  
  
"What's the headcount?" Garrosh whispered.  
  
"I spy five overseers," Saurfang replied, still watching. "The rest are dross. If I know aqir, they'll scatter once the big ones die."  
  
"Six," Garrosh corrected.  
  
Saurfang spread his fingers, each one pointing to a designated overseer. "Five."  
  
"Six," he said again, slinking a finger toward the bottom of the twitching mound of corpses. With careful scrutiny, Saurfang saw glimpses of fat chenille legs peeking out beneath the array of body parts.  
  
"Stick my swine," he muttered. "I'll bet that's a tunneler. There may already be an entire tunnel system below us. And going by the remains in Quel'thalas, they may be thousands of years old! They predate the Sundering!"  
  
"If there is anyone with experience in a sundered world, it is the Mag'har," Garrosh said proudly, gesturing behind him as two fellow brown-skinned orcs arrived in shaman garb. Their pauldrons appeared to be made of molten rock and their heavy furred robes were the color of twilight. "These earthguards trained ceaselessly at the Throne of the Elements in Nagrand. The tunnels will trouble us no more."

The pair of earthguards nodded. A meager squadron of orcs and trolls caught up to them, armed and ready.

"High Overlord Saurfang, sir! We await your command!"

  
Garrosh meant to roll his eyes but his met with several others, all of which were on one creature. The overseer was looking directly at him. All of the units at its feet turned their attentions to him. All of their eyes—hundreds and hundreds—glimmered like flipped coins, catching the light and sight of the encroaching offense.

  
The overseer hissed.

  
"They've seen us!" Saurfang gripped his reaver. "Don't get separated or you'll get _separated_ , understand? Go, GO!"

  
The infantry clambered down into the basement, tossing knives and firing arrows haphazardly. Saurfang shouted orders and Garrosh cleared a path, sweeping his axes near his knees to carve away at the writhing mass of drones. The earthguards lagged at the entrance to the basement, concentrating their efforts on feeling out the porosity of the land below. Just as they had made some headway, a geyser of nerubians shot up from beneath the pile of bodies with an ear-splitting screech.

_There are so many._

  
"I told you, boy! Never mind those! Get the big ones!" Saurfang barked.  
  
"I can't if I'm _crawling_ with these things!" Garrosh feverishly smacked at the swarm scaling his body.

High Overlord Saurfang muscled forward and, with a powerful war cry, hefted his axe and cleaved the first of five overseers—minus the tunneler—in two. Its black blood hit the ceiling. And, just as he had said, a large mass of nerubians at the feet of the overseer immediately scattered, retreating into the tunnels. Then the others scattered, more and more, until all of the drones frenzied on each other's backs and faces, further eroding the crumbling floor and creating a whirlpool of movement. The currents randomly pushed the Horde units, both alive and dead, into disarray.

The High Overlord's axe had too much surface area to fend off the smaller nerubians, so he held it close to his body and concentrated on a path—to no avail. Garrosh, meanwhile, swung his hand-axes in a whirlwind, trying at least to keep his feet on the ground. But the Hold's basement was now more tunnel than floor, and more tunneler than tunnel. Ammo and weapons and bodies were all being swallowed up.

The serendipitous sounds of Kalimag, the language of the elements, floated down from the steps above over the noises of death and combat. Tremors struck the fortress as the ground itself—what remained of it—seemed to come to life. It tucked and folded in on itself, slow and shallow like ocean waves. Sweat broke out on the earthguards' brows as they communed with the hard-packed Northrend soil, begging it to seal the caverns below. Loose soil swirled up in tight cyclones, braiding itself into ropes and stitching the earth back together.

  
"That's it! Keep at it! You're almost—" A hard crack from the whip-like legs of an overseer thrust Saurfang against the wall. His axe flew from his grasp and bounced on the quaking floor. He tried to shake it off; everything was shaking.

From beneath their leader's tall legs, a swarm of drones snaked out and latched onto him, one after another, each quicker than the last, and pinned him to the floor. They ran tracks across his body and each other, their legs stepping and sticking out in all directions. But after some trial and error the nerubians fell into a pattern, weaving themselves side to side in a quivering motion. They fell in line and fit their limbs together like the teeth of cogs until they were one unit, vibrating intensely. More piled on for a second layer, blotting out the orc's vision and entombing him in their bodies.

Varok had been spun up in webs before, the deceptive stuff it was. One would think those see-through strands, soft and easily swat away, would be like tearing through linen. But it stretches to your form—he once instructed the Warsong Outriders to avoid the spiders in Ashenvale—and the more you move, the faster you suffocate. The Warsong always kept a blade on their person, but if the webbing was thick enough it would be as difficult as cutting through rock.

A webbing of chitin was unexpected, he would admit. The nerubians had expertly thatched themselves around his body. And though Saurfang was clever, seasoned, and wise, he was not a Warsong. He sweat under all of their bristly legs, air becoming precious, skin turning hot. He did not move. But they did.

It was all growing quite heavy. They did not weigh much, but the faster they moved, the slower he did. Every breath came through cheesecloth. Sweat poured down his neck and stuck his woolen tabard to his prickling, burning skin. He could feel the heat roiling along the metal plating of his pauldrons, threatening to brand on contact. His leathers were becoming stiff. He could not bend his fingers or curl his toes in his boots. He tried little movements, all for naught. The rising temperature was slowly making a crucible of his armor.

He fought for consciousness as his throat tightened. If he could not disrupt their kindling, the friction of the swarm would roast Saurfang alive.

  
\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's me splitting the same chapter I've been working on for months in half. -Again-. formatting's been giving me a lot of trouble so i hope it's still legible. thanks for stickin with me


	6. Chapter 6

Bodies were disappearing into the regenerating earth. Swathes of drones had been defeated but the Horde was still outnumbered greatly. It was impossible to count the casualties; the moment one soldier fell to the ground, another was being consumed by it.

Garrosh was using all of his body now, kicking his feet when he could not sweep his axes low and elbow-dropping the ones that managed to stack themselves in a totem pole up to his waist. They came at him from all sides, all angles. He turned and got an array of legs straight to the face, the coarse little hairs prickling him and rubbing like sandpaper on his lips. In a feral panic to claw them off, he ended up body-checking an overseer in his momentary blindness. It spit and hissed at him, then lifted one spire of a leg and thunked it in the middle of Garrosh's chest. Another leg came up, positioned for the orc's head, and Garrosh only stared.

A flash. A hot blue streak of light speared itself through the cluster of eyes in the center of the nerubian's crest, spurting more black blood to join its partner's on the ceiling. Defeated, the monster collapsed backward. Garrosh was freed from its grasp and watched its body crush scores of drones and collapse an underlying tunnel. Just as a second overseer turned to face him, a second flash of blue light from below sent it toppling over in a splash of dark blood. The drones were sent into unmitigable hysteria.

  
"The elements!" An orc cried. "The elements fight with us!"  
"They summon lightning from underground," another marveled.

  
Nerubians and all sorts of corpses were still being sifted into the closing fissures, but dozens of the tunnelers and two large overseers remained. Overlord Hellscream sucked up his haggard breaths, took advantage of the clearing, and charged forth. Although broad-shouldered and top-heavy, Garrosh managed to stay on his toes. His body dipped and teetered to counteract the rippling ground beneath them. He spun his axes, then leapt forward and slashed.

Down came another overseer like a mighty tree, crashing upon its underlings and drowning them in its entrails. Just one left. Yet before Garrosh could even pivot to see it, a third blue bolt struck through its mouth and sent its mandibles flying.

 _It seems I must compete with the elements themselves for the killing blow,_ Garrosh grinned to himself.

A killing blow it was, for the final nerubian fell in defeat. In great confidence, the soldiers that survived set about grinding the dross.

  
"Hail Kalandrios!"  
"Hail Gordawg!"  
"The elements smile upon us this day!"

  
With the last utterances, the earthguards completed their ritual. The ground seemed to hold. Though they kicked up quite a bit of dust, the nerubians that remained were being cleared quickly.

The sarcophagus of drones began to unlink as the tide of battle turned from their favor, and they fell from Saurfang's roasting body like dead leaves. Cool air chilled the sweat rolling down his face. He gasped for air and came to, immediately expending the little energy he had regained to pull the few clinging nerubians off his body. His surroundings faded into view: the fight was still on, but it was nearly won. He coughed and limped over to his axe, which was half-buried in the mended floor.

The ailing nerubians suddenly pulled back from the skirmish when another tremor struck, but the Horde soldiers paid no mind. Aftershocks were common when shaman molded the earth.

  
"They're retreating," a guard said.  
"There's nowhere for you to run, filthy bugs!" another orc cackled. "Your precious tunnels are buried in elemental earth!"

  
Regardless, the creatures shuffled in unison to a particular spot and into a strange formation. The rumbling had not abated—they had been waiting for it—and then grew into a pounding, a knocking that reverberated across the floor and rattled around in the guards' steel-toed boots.

Garrosh gripped his axes.

  
_Six._

  
The tunneler behemoth uprooted itself with a deafening, throaty roar, its tree trunk legs scrambling for purchase on the surface. It asserted itself like a battering ram, throwing the weight of its heavy carapace around to splatter the Horde on the walls and pin them underfoot. Arrows and more failed to pierce the shell, three marksmen losing their lives in the process. It reared back and charged at the assortment of soldiers, smattering dents and scratches where it ricocheted off the edges of the room. It bashed itself against the iron walls again and again, baying guttural and phlegmy. Whether the walls or its carapace would crack first was uncertain.

It would not take the keep. Not while Garrosh and his Warsong Offensive stood within it. Hellscream opened wide and howled a sharp battle cry of his own to cut through the creature's fury. Orc and bug alike felt their hairs stand on end and their bones ring and burn. What soldiers still lived covered their ears and doubled over from the sound, but the behemoth was out of luck. It hopelessly wrapped its forelegs about its face, searching fruitlessly for ears to plug.

Garrosh smirked and then crouched into position. He leaned forward, ready to leap up, when three blue-hot sparks flit up from the ground and into the tunneler's exposed soft underbelly. Two in the abdomen and one, askew, shot straight up through the mandibles. One of Garrosh's handaxes followed through.

The giant nerubian faltered with a gurgling roar as its forelegs clutched its gored face cleaved in twain. What could be its jaw hung off-kilter before falling off completely and gushing opalescent blue blood from its throat. Its back legs kicked furiously into the earth as it tried to tunnel, half of its face hanging there and swinging. The forelegs left its head, trying to dig but blinded by its own blood, smearing the stuff all over in its struggle.

But its back legs succeeded; the small puncture was enough to explode into a sizable tear in the newly-mended ground, a run in the fabric of the earth. The fissure split further, snaking under the two of them, and all the floor shook again. The tunneler struggled to stay upright, but Garrosh spread his stance and steadied himself. He straddled the opening then walked an edge, and in crossing over he caught a glimpse of the knot of livid Horde arms and broken nerubian legs.

The drones dissolved back into formless chaos at the fall of its champion. They pushed and shoved all at once to retreat into the narrow crevice. Garrosh stepped back and watched them funnel into the tunnels like grain in a silo. Numbers of hairy little bugs covered up the blue and green and brown arms of his soldiers. He felt himself a god watching the decay of a living planet, or sand rushing from a shattered hourglass. Had Kil'jaeden relished a sight such as this when Draenor was broken?

There was another flash and then—he was sure of it—a yelp as the tunneler's armored body started to ooze backward into its handiwork. It was no longer digging. Its face was completely mauled, and dark blue blood spilled from it in a bib down its front. Its dying body slunk backwards upon its own kind.

  
"A thousand of your kind will die for every Horde life you took from me," Garrosh spat, then placed a plated boot atop the behemoth, ready to nudge it all the way into the sinkhole. He looked straight down to estimate the depth of the plummet and squinted his eyes, searching further into the darkness. He was immediately drawn to the glowing Darkspear bow.

  
"UDEN!" came a small, yet defiant voice, and through the dust and debris was the clear but huddled silhouette of the human prisoner.

  
\--

  
Torchlight from the surface now diluted the blue light radiating from the enchanted bow. Half of your arrows were spent trying to break through or send a signal flare or take down the big guys—anything to dig yourself out.

Your face was damp and the air was too, stringing beads of moisture as your eyes were lit up by the world above. The tunneler had broken through but was wedged between the above and below, between life and death. Its midnight blood dripped into the tunnel.

None but one man could have felled the beast, and the one you expected lorded above him, sure and glorious, brown skin warm in the new light.

You locked eyes with him, then saw his foot shove off the great galleon.

Here you knew you would be crushed, pinned beneath the heavy metallic plates of its chitin, the sinew of its log-legs, drowned in the dark blood and banished to the ocean floor like so many drowned ones before you, stuck to the bottom, hair floating—

So it fell, and so it crushed, dragging many bodies, but none your own, down to the pit of the caverns that would become its grave.

The opening was so large now, a doorway torn open by battle. From the cloud of dust—to pull you from purgatory, to burst through the firmament—came one heavy, deadly hand.

Wedged between the above and below, between life and death, you reach out and grab it.

  
\--

  
The marksmen from the upper reaches rushed down at the news. All the tenants that remained in the Hold crowded into the basement for cleanup and assessment. As the final nerubians were dealt with (truly, this time), the earthguards once again sought to seal the earth. They found it to be a struggle, more than it had been beforehand. It was as if the elements were resistant, even temperamental. Though the shaman were so far north, the spirits within the heart of Azeroth still resonated within them and offered them aid.

Horde members of all kinds rounded up the corpses for disposal. It took two orcs each (or a tauren if they could spare one) to move the overseers. The biggest of the brown orcs grinned wider and wider as he oversaw the process, eyeing all of the arrows in the carapaces. A handful of them maintained an ethereal blue sheen.

The human sat crumpled beside him, breathing hard and trembling. Though it was still naked, he picked up the human by the underarms and held it away from him, arms outstretched.

  
_You could still shoot!_

  
In a strange turn of events, the brittle thing was the one responsible for the subduing the largest tunneler. How was it possible? It had spent the last few days on its back cowering like a dog before him and the Horde, yet now, in the face of annihilation, it fights?

So, all this time it had been holding back. Playing victim. But it exerts itself when it must. With discipline, it will be at his call.

A jubilance, a giddiness filled his bones and sent his mind racing. Ah, he knew you had something in you; how brilliant he was to have you pulled from the wreckage. There was a reason you survived—yes, he knows it now—if you could get walking again, the Horde could have a double agent. You could defend the Hold. You could defend yourself, too, and serve as a watcher if need be.

Ideas were piling up and a breath of relief left him. Disposable though you were, you could be recycled. He refrained from clapping with excitement and had scooped you up if only to steady his hands, so pleased with you he was.

  
"Look here, my troops. It still fights. The wretched thing still wills itself not only to survive, but to fight!"

  
Murmurs cropped up as a group surrounded the pair. The human's arms hung limp in Garrosh's grasp.

  
"But those were shots from a Darkspear bow."  
"It was Tar'kil's bow. She was lost in the battle."  
"How could it have been the human? The arrows were blessed to be Tar'kil's only."  
"But they came from below! Everyone else down there was dead!"

  
Garrosh then looked at the human incredulously. "Is this true?" he asked, expecting it to answer. It was so vulnerable still, its eyes darting around in bewilderment, but it did not resist him like before.

Some goopy words fell out of its mouth. Garrosh belted out a laugh, shocking some of the chatting guards.

  
"Someone dress it once you've all tended to your wounds." He turned and further stretched his arms out to Tansy, reminiscent of handing off a sickly infant dripping with its own spit-up. Tansy wordlessly took the naked flesh heap away.

  
Garrosh wiped his hands on his trousers, reclaimed his twin axes, and then addressed the gathered forces. "It is a mighty loss we've felt today, but a mighty victory as well. We have conquered the nerubians and their ancient lands. Their leader is dead and their tunnels are plugged up. Any that remain in the quarry only await their demise."

  
"It was not their leader," came Saurfang's hoarse and stoic voice. "And the cost of this victory was much too great."

  
Garrosh's shoulders rolled forward.

  
"Many precious, honorable lives were given to quash this ambush, but it is our affront too in erecting a stronghold upon the hidden kingdom of Azjol-Nerub." The old orc gave a heavy sigh. "It is with deep regret our fallen must remain buried here. We would risk the entire Offensive if we were to reopen access to the tunnels for proper rites."

"They will be carried out, High Overlord." One of the Mag'hari shaman offered his services and bowed.

Saurfang gave his thanks to the shaman and was silent for moment. "I say the quarry must halt until reinforcements arrive, and in the meantime we must embank the basement to reinforce our walls."

"Embank?"

"Fill the cut. No more basement. It will be much work to move the forges up a level, but it is worth it for our safety."

He strode over to his axe and stomped away the parts of the floor that still clung to it. He then hefted it over his shoulder and saluted Garrosh with his free hand. Garrosh's reaction was a bit delayed, his hands holding both of his axes, and he managed to scrape away a salute by hitting a pommel against his chest.

  
\--

  
"An empty hand might as well be two," Warden Bullrok had explained to young Garrosh long ago. He had been tying leather straps around the haft of what would become a handaxe. "If you can hold your weapon in one hand, it means you need another. Either a new one, or a second one. Otherwise you're asking for an arm off. And if they get the arm holding your weapon, then what? A one-hand weapon leaves you unarmed."

  
"My fist is a weapon—" Garrosh had been grinning until a blur left the Warden's lap and cleaved him in the shoulder. A choke left the adolescent's throat and he bit back tears. Blood wept from the wound.

  
The warden pulled the handaxe from Garrosh's shoulder and pressed a swatch of treated leather against it. 

  
"One-armed is unarmed, pup. Fill them, or lose them."

==

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isnt perfect but i cannot STAND updating so irregularly so i just have to LET GO


	7. Chapter 7

The next days were living hell. The aftermath of the nerubian attack compounded upon your crash landing in the tundra. Adrenaline was finally winding down and the true magnitude of your injuries began to set in. Femurs could have been splinters from how it all felt. Did you have knees anymore? But you weren't paralyzed. You weren't paralyzed, you could be sure, because you could feel. Oh, and what suffering, to feel. Your feet must have been ground to dust, sand floating in tubes of flesh attached to your legs—pure scar tissue, you imagine—tendons reduced to single, fraying threads.

Perhaps not paralyzed, but you may never walk again. If you don't heal correctly, if at all, you may never walk again. And now you had double the recovery to slog through, and with a cold to boot. 

The moment you sat up on the animal hide that served as your bed, an elf's face appeared from under the doorway curtain. 

"It's that time again," he cooed, his accent suspiciously quel'dorei. 

  
\-- 

  
The stress was overwhelming. Northrend was becoming more uninhabitable by the second and they were hugging the shoreline as it is. The further inland, the closer to Icecrown, the more the Lich King's influence encroached upon them. 

  
Saurfang had spoken madness, but he was right. The enemy was much larger than he had imagined.  
  
"Fear has always been our greatest weapon." Garrosh turned the words over in his mind. "How, then, does one fight an enemy that knows no fear?"

  
_The Horde is strong. We won't give up. We can't give up,_ he thought to himself. _Can't run home with my tail between my legs. So much as I wish to._

Death carpeted the land surrounding Warsong Hold. Its tendrils crept to the very edge of Northrend, seemingly all the way to the horizon. The kvaldir stalked the mists, the Scourge had the run of the surface, and the nerubians' tunnels, Garrosh learned later, extended far beyond the tundra and into other regions of the continent. 

Thankfully there had been a lull in nerubian activity over the past few days. A warband consisting of the bulk of the already scant crew at Warsong Hold was finally dispatched for some much needed border patrol, leaving minimal forces behind for the day. Only perimeter units and a handful of craftsmen remained, and most were assisting the shaman in moving earth manually to fill the basement. The forges were moved up a level and, with them, the few basins that were salvaged were parked in an unused nook. It was still private, but a tad claustrophobic.

He knew you were the one to kill the behemoth, but the others couldn't believe it. The human was sitting on a pile of corpses when he found it! But the rest of the Offensive was convinced the elements had come to their aid, or that a troll, this "Tar'kil" had fired the arrows herself before her death. But her corpse was nowhere to be found, and it was difficult to discern how her bow ended up so far from her body if the human had not been using it. The human, too, in its weakened state, would not have been able to take it from her, of course, nor encumber itself with such large equipment if it were useless. 

You weren't useless. At least not yet. Of that, he was fairly certain, even if others disagreed. 

Now was a good enough time as any.

  
\--

  
A keen eye and quiet mouth made a good hunter.  
Drip sweat, not tears.  
Steady hand and tight lip.  
Leave your step lighter than the breath of a bird. 

  
All of the long adhered-to platitudes taunted you as, again, you slouched in the basin and cried, tears running down your chin and chest and mingling with the bath water. It was so ominously quiet today, ringing your whimpers and sniffles to the high iron rafters. So silent, any noise echoed. 

Let them climb the rafters, then. You had forfeited any sense of dignity long ago, even before the entire Horde had seen your naked body. Whatever was left of it.

It was hard to believe you were almost killed. Well, you were thinking of this most recent time, being buried alive. But not so long ago you were almost killed in the crash. These things happen in threes, they say. It's hard to predict what your demise will eventually be.

Tansy had tended to you afterward, but it was the giant Hellscream who had pulled you out. You had grabbed his hand. It was a privilege, you thought, to be able to choose your method of execution. Being bludgeoned to death seemed better than suffocating. Or crashing and burning. But you grabbed his hand and he sent you away. And you were in the bath now. Again. It was like nothing had happened, save for the new scenery. 

  
The light from the doorway is blocked by his mass. He approaches. His hands, each a lead pendulum, swing only so with his gait. Instinctively, you draw a breath. From a few paces away, he stares you down. His breath, too, is drawn, as if tasting your shame in the air and his stomach turning because of it. Nevertheless he takes a seat on the stool beside the bath, sized for an orc but still creaking beneath his weight. You composed yourself. 

Your crying eventually peels away, allowing the sensation of pain, open and fresh, to rush again to the forefront. But you will not cry before Hellscream. Not while you are ensnared like this, while he knows you are afraid. You cannot give him the satisfaction.

Yet all that is heard is his heaving breath, strained by the cold and confined to his throat, amplified by the lack of all other sound this eerie morning. Garrosh sat placidly on the stool, apparently deep in thought. The way he is hunched over, his hands folded in his lap, recalls confessionals in the Stormwind Cathedral. He faces forward, eyes unfocused. 

He speaks, though not to you; a smattering of Orcish, subdued and gray, hoarse with a whisper delicate enough for the ears of spirits. He cranes his head and your eyes meet.

You sniff, but you do not look away. Just as low and muted, more Orcish slithers forth, and he again faces ahead. 

Despite not understanding a word, you watch Garrosh as he talks. His mind sidewinds through his thoughts, his volume and intensity fluctuating throughout his monologue. He catches and reins himself in when he becomes too incensed, glancing your way once or twice, then resumes talking. 

Like your tears, the Orcish eventually peels away. Your pain, unbearable, fills the silence.

  
"I don't want to die."

  
He acknowledges you, then speaks again. The two of you begin a parallel conversation, speaking adjacent to one another rather than with each other.

  
"I never cry this much. Not in my life. But I... I guess I'm scared. I'm scared in a way I have never been before. I have never felt so weak."  
  
His folded hands rock as he gives his own tangential response. His is long, but you wait your turn.  
  
"I don't understand why you keep me here. Why you saved me. You keep asking for information I don't have. I'm— was a hunter. That's all. But you saved me. You let me live."  
  
He is brief this time. His weight shifts and the great orc turns his body to face you. He sets his leaden hands on the rim of the basin.  
  
"Is it because of the nerubians?"  
  
"Nerub'ar," he echoes, yellow eyes boring into your soul. 

  
Orcs have eyes like insects—you used to think, before your run-in with said nerubians—or like rodents or hogs, dark and dull. But the ones before you are fox-like, stretched to the edges with autumn colors. They were sharp. Clever. Yet it is he who is first to look away.

His hand lifts and hovers there, ready to strike, both of you watching it as though it was possessed. Garrosh, with a great deal of discipline, sets it down. You look at one another and share an expression that reads, "That was close". Your nervous laugh does not ease the tension any.

Your hands rest within the wide berth between his on the edge. Now is the opportune time to say it, if there was something you had been meaning to say. But you are exhausted and afraid and there is nothing you can tell this creature, or anyone else, except of this current state. You are exhausted. You are afraid. You are sick. You are in pain. You do not want to die. 

His thumbs overlap as his hands slide over yours. 

You instinctively jerk backward at his touch, the water splashing loudly as you cut a wedge through it. But you cannot pry yourself free. You are doomed. You let yourself become vulnerable. You, simple fool, forgot the lethality of his hands, of his grip, and now you are cuffed forever in those weapons. 

You are prepared to plead for your life but it all dissipates, evaporates, when met with the magma churning in Garrosh's amber eyes. Through that mouth of jagged teeth and tusks, he finally confesses.

  
"You no die. Good."

  
It is hard to tell, but you think he is smiling. It is some eerie, malformed face that creases around his tusks and eyes, curls his lip up, makes his eyes acidic. His hands release yours, and then he departs, leaving you alone to resume your bath.

You have just met Garrosh Hellscream, truly, for the first time.

  
\--

  
_It will exert itself at my call._

  
\--

  
There is a dent in your forehead from where you've been resting against the rim of the tub. Your head is heavy and plugged. Your throat is raw, burning, scraped by constant coughing. 

So tired of the baths. But when you rise, when any part of you meets the Northrend air, all of the heat escapes you, feeling yourself an exothermic insect. Your rib cage shivers, your marrow frozen; you feel, truly, chilled to the bone. 

Can't get warm.

  
The elf returns, Saurfang in tow. 

  
"Any news for us?" The elf smirks at you, then to Saurfang. The orc looks beyond you.  
  
"Just... what I told you. The gnomes found... something. But I don't know what. It seemed... important."  
  
"And that's all?"  
  
"Yes. It's all I know." You cough violently, then recoup. "I-I promise."  
  
"You know, it's funny. They say you're the one that killed the big tunneler. But how can a human use a Darkspear weapon?"  
  
"I just could. Like any other bow and arrow."  
  


  
The elf shrugs and turns to leave, Saurfang following close behind without a word. You reach for his wrinkled arm, otherwise taut with muscle for an elder.

  
"Saurfang..."  
  
He does not look at you.  
  
"I can't get warm."  
  
He shuts his eyes, still facing forward. The elf stops, then looks over his shoulder at you.  
  
"Please, Saurfang, I— I c-can't get warm. Unless I'm in the bath, I..."  
  
He huffs and elbows you back into the water.  
  
"I c-can't get warm," you whine. "I don't stay warm..."  
  
The High Overlord grips the edge of the basin, towering over you. Flatly, he says, "You chose this."

  
Two sets of footsteps exit past the curtain and toward the forges. Skin tingling, bones still cold, you whimper, "I don't stay warm."

==

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nice little two-for-one here. since i passed the big hurdle of that last chapter-turned-three-chapters i realized i had more ready to post! so i offer a next-day expedited update to make up for the big delay between chapters (i hope).


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some graphic descriptions of violence in this chapter.

Sounds of cannon fire.

You peel the furs from your sticky skin and sit up, hearing the barrage resound off the steel walls. There isn't much commotion, but one voice rings loud and clear above all others.

Another voice, just as loud but not as tested, combats the first. They are arguing. The rhythm returns: ready, aim—

One, two, then, a bit delayed, a third. Then, a string of gasps. 

  
It was like a cat's mewl, like the way they learned to mimic the babies of those who had domesticated them to get attention. It hits a certain frequency, that specific note, the ideal pitch that resonates a concrete sympathy signal. It's the octave that makes the tears roll down your face, makes your bones shudder, tugs those heartstrings. It's the sawing of the viola bow, the whimper of a dog, the wail of a crying child— _meow, meow, meow_ —

The beast roared ferocious and terrible but beneath it, running through your teeth, was that desperate, cloying sound.

  
\-- 

  
Another supply crate flew to pieces against the wall.  


  
"How? How could all of these supplies be ruined? We need these," he said, voice barely restrained. "We really need these."  
  
"Another attack of the kvaldir, Hellscream."  
  
"They're all waterlogged," Garrosh grimaced. "As if they've been drowned for ages. What magic is this? How can this be?"  
  
"We do not know. The kvaldir—"  
  
"What _do_ you know, old man? Quit telling me you don't know!" Garrosh tossed another crate in disgust. The soft wood flaked apart, spilling out fattened books and moldy bread.  
  
"Garrosh, control yourself." A rote command from Saurfang.  
  
"Everything in this land is spoiled and rotting! Everything! From our rations to my advisor," he sneered.  
  
"I'm sure you have much to teach me about being spoiled, pup."  
  


  
His fingernails stressed within his leather gloves to lurch out and really dig into that flesh, to feel the soft pop of eyeballs under the pads of his thumbs. He beat the skull-drum powerful and merciless, wondering what sound it would make without the teeth in the head and the red eyeballs filling the holes, without the tongue flapping, without all the wet spit and browned tusks and the mess of gray hair, just useless insulation...

Varok finally forced Garrosh off of his chest and sat up from the floor, elbowing the younger orc hard in the temple. Garrosh staggered a bit, a pendulous length of drool from his lip, then slurred a few curses. 

  
STRETCH A DRUMSKIN TIGHT.

  
Garrosh pounded on Varok's ribs, striking blows upward to further deviate the ribs at his sternum. It was a novice move but it still hurt like a bitch's bite. Lo and behold, that was his next tactic, for Saurfang felt Garrosh's jagged teeth gnawing at his collarbone. 

The blood elves had rabbited off like the long-eared rodents they were, and a Forsaken man ambivalently sifted through the ration scraps. The rest, mostly orcs, only watched.

  
STRETCH A DRUMSKIN TIGHT.

  
Garrosh took a thick fistful of gray braids in his hand and pulled hard, grinding his teeth for the marrow in Saurfang's clavicle. But Varok, in plate kneepads, forced Garrosh's legs apart. 

The teethmarks would certainly scar, but that wasn't too much of a concern for the High Overlord. He watched his junior fall flat on his rear and then planted his armored foot on the younger's chest. Garrosh's arms still flailed like severed tentacles, blindly struggling to hit any target at all.

  
STRETCH A DRUMSKIN TIGHT. STRETCH A SCALPDRUM. SKIN A SKULLDRUM. SCALP A SKULLDRUM. PULL AND KILL AND KILL AND PULL AND KILL KILL 

  
The red abated to the edges of Garrosh's vision but it took much longer for the froth in his mouth to settle. Varok wearily rubbed the back of his head and then removed his foot.  
  


  
"We must simply wait another week for supplies. In the meantime, we shall send scouts to search for food and clean water. Avoid the shore at all costs."  


Few of strong constitution were left to hear the order. They immediately turned away to spread the news.

  
"Lunge at me like that again, Hellscream, and I will beat your hide so harsh that Thrall will have nowhere to put you but upon a pyre."

Garrosh slowly sat up from the floor. He was seeing double.

  
\-- 

  
You noticed your soft, splitting nails. Your toenails especially seemed a bit soft and flaking at the edges. You tried hanging your arms out and putting your feet up on the edge, but it gives you cold spots. And your hands and feet get swollen and wrinkled anyway. Your whole body just sits in water. Just sits there. You just sit there.

The air is so damn cold. You're like slush coffee. That black coffee you had outside, with your father cradling the mug, and an applesauce-looking chunk of sleet slid from the roof overhanging the cottage and landed _plop!_ in his cup. Slush coffee, you said, laughing. A man's iced coffee.

Despite everything, you take a moment to miss him.  


  
\-- 

  
THE NERVE OF HIM, THE NERVE OF HIM...  
  
His fists were sore but he kept going.  
  
HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW...

  
He drummed his hands on the metal walls. The hexagonal rivets cut into his fingers.

  
WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO? I CAN'T FIX IT.  
  
He can't fix it, he knows. It was a curse. It had to be. He doesn't trust magic.  
  
YOU CANNOT TRUST MAGIC. IT WILL ROT AND SPOIL.  
  
And he had embarrassed him, mortified him before them all. He had—  


  
"Cool your head, whelp! Or you'll make this place have a breakdown with you."  


  
He couldn't stay here. 

Garrosh stalked away from his sleeping quarters.

  
\-- 

  
The sounds of cannon fire returned. The door to the baths swung open.

Darkness flashed across the walls as the light was snuffed for just a moment. The walls seemed smaller now, falling in on themselves and hot with the fury emanating from Hellscream as he stormed inside. With two hands and one swoop, he slammed the iron door shut. 

There was a low metallic sound of his forehead pressing on the door. His hands on the door balled up into fists. His shoulders rose up, and then, inhaling the dreadful silence, he howled. 

Then, there was nothing. The occasional sound of dripping. You could see from his back that he was heaving, but his breaths must have been too shallow to hear. And then he screamed again.  


Two basins preceded yours in a neat little line, undone buttons before the one fastened with you inside. And the room that felt like a teapot before he came into it moved like an accordion, contracting and expanding, a hallway undecided on its own length. So, when he came toward you, it was yet not at all. There were two basins, then three, then two again. There was a wooden stool in the air, then in pieces on the floor. There was more howling, more and more, and then there were four basins, then three, then two, then four, then two, then three, then two.

There was so much ringing that it was hard to keep track. He began the thudding again by drumming his fists on the iron walls, still howling incoherently. Then the Orcish spewed out—little razorblades—and he kept going and going.  


  
"SAURFANG," you heard him say at least once. Then something like "dabu", but things before and after. Serifs, suffixes? Appendices? What was that word again? Blood churned in your ears. 

Your fingers plugged up your head and _benevolent Light_ it finally stopped.  


  


  
Garrosh was looking at you. Blood dripped down the wooden stool in his hand. 

There were two basins in front of yours. Your arms dripped with water.

Everything was a very strange color. Garrosh threw the stool on the ground and sunk his arms into the second basin. His arms dripped with water.

Two short strides took him toward you and the pearlescent haze lifted. So he had his hands at the edge of your basin again. Angular little crescents were carved into his fingers, bleeding dark and foreign.  


  
Orc blood was worth some pieces. It was a vindictive kind of black gold. Some sold it in vials with all sorts of wild proclamations—it will cure baldness, increase alertness and energy, build muscle, lose weight, enhance virility in the bedroom—with equally wild disclaimers. Some alchemists studied it and experimented with its consistency and properties. Some Alliance officials collected it as bounty. But everyone knew it meant an orc had been harmed. And hopefully killed.  


  
Liquid smoke dissolved from his hands as he plunged them into your bath. He stood up and then became three basins away.  


  
\-- 

  
Tansy intercepted him in the corridor. She was on her way to the prisoner. 

  
"I heard a bit of ruckus in there. Is everything all right?"  
  
Garrosh stopped moving. His fingernails dug into his palms. The observant cow noticed.  
  
"Are... _you_ all right?"  


  
REPUGNANT FILTH.  
_She's done nothing wrong. She's doing what I asked._  
FILTH, INVADER, LEECH. FILTH.  
_She has come at my call._  


  
Tansy moved past him and toward the iron door of the washroom. Garrosh stood still, black droplets forming on the floor. 

  
\-- 

  
You stir again at nightfall. You had slept throughout the entire afternoon and evening. You had nightmares about his hands again, about tadpoles-turned-leeches swimming out from his cuts. Your skin crawls at the false memory of the things wriggling under your skin, slipping into your ears and screaming. A ringing, a howling.

Strands of fur tickled like their fishy tails, slimy and damp with your sweat. They are all like little grabby fingers grazing your arms, all beckoning and inappropriate. Sweat drips down your body, dewy spiders descending to gobble up the hairy worms moving upstream. Your fingernails try to scrape the ecosystem out from under your skin.

  
Big brown feet walk by. Coals turn about in the pyre and then the feet return. Garrosh is just now coming to bed. 

He sees that you see him but only looks back at you, silent, eyes half-lidded. You look at each other. His ears are flat. His eyes narrow as he watches you scratch.

A canteen lands in your lap. The little amphibians are sated in returning to water and the spiders are washed away. The furs are still wet, but their grip loosens. You lie down, and Garrosh says nothing. He is still watching.

Your eyelids flap open less and less. You're too tired to talk, and he looks too pissed off. He is wound tight, you think.

  
He falls asleep facing away from you this time. You feel very weak, like this is the last time you'll fall asleep. For good. 

You want to sleep forever. Maybe you will.

==


End file.
